i see a lot of people posting that orc is the best and in this post i will try quickly explain why that is wrong (on expert and master difficulty - on adept and lower, orc May be better or equal - i will get to this)

now i will say that i think orcs have cool lore in the game and are cool both to interact with and fight as enemies, but personally i cant stand playing one because of the ridiculous grunts they make when fighting. would have liked the nord voice to be deeper, but its not anywhere near as bad.

also importantly, this is a single player game, and any race can do any job , but some will have advantages over others. (higher skills at a lower level early on, racial bonuses and skills) for the sake of my post i will assume that during the playthrough neither smithing, enchanting, or alchemy are used.


first, they are roughly equal with the 1.04 to 1.05 scale, but nords have the 50% frost resist, which is a clear advantage in many situations, whether using light or heavy armor, one hand and shield, two hand, or dual wielding.

second is the 24 hour skills. lots of people think berserk is the 'i win' button but it is actually battle cry.

i can count the number of truly challenging fights in this game on 1 hand, but in every one of them, it is Not against a Dragon, a dragon priest, etc. It is 'mid' game, level 15-30 range, in a fort against 2-3 'very tough' bandit chiefs, with 2-3 'not tough' bandit supporters and 1 or 2 mages backing them up. the silver hand fight against the skinner comes close but not quite because there is not a mage there and mages play a key reason why the nord skill is better, for example in Trevas Watch.

it is one of several hard fights against large groups of enemies, on master i can guarantee it is very difficult - the mages light you up with very damaging magic or set you on fire so just one supporting bandits arrow will do extreme damage and it will make fighting the chiefs very hard.

battle cry is the superior skill for tough fights because you can make all of these enemies run away, giving you a chance to charge down the mages, even on master difficulty. with berserk, you will still die, guaranteed, and need to either return after your character is OP for the situation or tone down the difficulty then use berserk. on adept, berserk is more powerful, because it makes things easier for the careless and less skilled player.



both of them are better than Redguards who have a joke of a racial ability. Stam regen... eating one of the many regen consumables gives the exact same thing!! What were the devs thinking, Adrenaline Rush should give Increased attack speed or movement speed or something useful and unique, not something that can be made with tomato potato leek and whatever and used at any time. furthermore, i do not like how they made it seem like every Redguard is from the desert area in this game. I thought the Khajiit were the desert dwellers and redguards were from the games 'africa' region, which is not all desert. Too much arab for me.


finally , personally i do like the lore and the way this TES game has reworked the 'standard' fantasy game races, orcs are now good natives rather than the typical bad guys, but i will throw it out there that not everyone thinks so. i let my brother borrow this game , who is not the type to post on forums but plays games he likes, for some reason wanted to make a high elf rather than a nord when he started (when he was a kid he collected a High Elves warhammer army, who were typically portrayed as being always morally good, perhaps even moreso than humans, besides being physically tough as well as capable with magic). in this game, he was forced to be an ugly obnoxious whiner who is on the side of the enemies, and no surprise, he did not enjoy the game anywhere near as much as i did (possibly for different reasons, we like different things now, but he does think it is good and looks great, although i suspect this is a major part of it). would it have been so hard to invent a new invading race to be the enemies? What about just fully copying the warhammer/previous-novels-it-is-based-on lore and bring armies of Chaos into the picture ? Warhammer is not the only set of pre-TES lore in which the high elves were not supposed to be evil, just one that came to mind.

None of the racials are truly gamebreaking, but i do agree that the Nord War-Cry is absurdly powerful. Then again, any 24 hour power should dramatically change the course of that specific battle, otherwise it wouldn't be worth using(kinka like in oblivion.)

As for high elves...you're mad they're not like another game? I don't get it.

But those guys from hammerfell have curved swords. Curved. Swords.

"i cant stand playing one because of the ridiculous grunts they make when fighting"

i stoped reading from there on

And about bretons?They have 50% resistance to magic,that makes them like invencible,not because of the dragonskin,dragonskin svcks....

Unless you have an up to date game at which point resists don't matter at all. Even if they do it's easy to get tons of magic resist and make it trivial.

*shrug*

If I wanted people to run away I'd use Dismay, I don't. I want them dead. Berseker Rage + Elemental fury makes everything in a room drop dead in seconds.

They have 25% magic resist... which doesn't even work right now. Dragonskin gives 50% absorption... which is awesome.

High Elves have always been N'wahs.

25% actually, according to the wiki.


P.S. I don't think any of the races seem too powerful as you can become an OP powerhouse if you play your cards right, as any race. Basically all you need is a race that represents your favored class. As for Nord/Redguard, the only major difference is the starting boost. I like 2h weapons so I picked Nord as my warrior.

They seem a good bit alike now IMO. Racial stats and abilities really separated the races in previous games. Doesn't seem to be the case any more. Orc Berserk power is still pretty cool.

Redguards es #1 warriors in Tamriel... too bad they got the shaft on size, passives, and daily skills in Skyrim.

Adrenaline Rush (morrowind): Fortify Agility 50pts for 60sec on Self
Fortify Endurance 50pts for 60sec on Self
Fortify Speed 50pts for 60sec on Self
Fortify Strength 50pts for 60sec on Self
Fortify Health 25pts for 60sec on Self

Adrenaline Rush (Skyrim): Stamina regenerates 10x faster for 60 seconds.

Fortify strength 50 pts added directly to your dmg in Morrowind it should be noted to. In Skyrim, I can run away more? Or get in some extra power attacks I don't use anyways cuz it's just almost effective to spam basic attacks? Sounds like a good trade...

Nords are best for crowd control then?

Mano Y Mano an Orc would eat any nord for breakfast. Anyway, you can just fus ro dah the room, berserk and head for the strong magic user who one-shotted you on the last try. And then there's always ice form...

There are many approaches to crowd control that aren't limited to once a day. There is no equivalent to berserk.

Yes,I noticed that before the patch Hangrevers and Mages(specially vampires) were like sweetrolls to me,but now they take insane damage,or iam wrong?

25% resistance, actually, which is still ridiculously awesome. And that dragonskin makes you an invincible flaming mage of death for a minute when you're fighting other mages.

the nord war-cry is a bs power, beserk is much more useful

stamina regan can be useful depending on the character (but your right, it should have somethig else)

high elves are dikes (normaly), the believe that creation made them mortal and pised off their gods (and they believe this on a hunch, no god has told them they were mad) and it is a good thing they did not go with the crappy elves of other movies (irl legends and myths say elves are horrible creatures, not martyers, besides this is TES not anotehr game)

and yesit would have been very very very hard to fit another, lore friendly, race in, akavir are still at war on their continent, the sload are not around for now (even if they came back it is clear they do not care for other races and they hardly ever bother the "lesser" races), the mormer dissapered (again), dwemer cant come back (not that they want to kill everything anyway), the falmer are way too few in number (and should not even exist if the dwemer betrayed them), yokuda was sunk so nothing can come from there, atmora is uninhabiable so nothing can attack from there either, the hist are too calculating to try to launch an attack aganst the entire world, deadra are uninterested in mundas (dagon excluded, but he cant enter [directly] anymore) vampires are subtle or at least not bent on world domination, no human race is omnicidle, same with the other elves (dunmer do have good qualities after all) and beast races, and bethesda cant just pull a race out of their ass because, lore-wise, the majority of races are known (and any new races discovered would clearly be uninterested in the rest of the races seeing as how they have not lanched an attacked, or even made contact, or they are so miniscule that everyone else has missed them)

I thought BC was junk when i first started , why make enemies run ? but even the frost resist is almost better than berserk - then I started to realize that BC is actually the far superior skill in very hard battles on the hardest difficulties as I have already explained

High Elves in this game are complete tools whereas they are usually portrayed as being morally 'better' than men who more often succumb to being evil, etc, just seems bass ackwards. Yes that is my complaint to confirm. Not saying LOTR high elves, i liked the first movie, but even there they are portrayed as wimps kindof. What happened to tough and good high elves - just sayin.


People who are saying Orc is better clearly cannot read and comprehend my post. For Hard difficulties Nord is better. This game is not about 1v1 duels, and if you want to say orc is better in a theoretical 1v1, you could just kite it for 60 seconds, or use BC and kill it while their berserk does nothing and they just run.


Haters wish they could feel the wood in my 83.

The Orc gameplay sounds are also completely awful. So bad. Why not have a voice selection anyways for all races ? Finally, Bretons are OK, sure, but they do suffer a bit on the scale and I dont think they have any ability to help with the Very Hard fights where the 'better' races will clearly come out on top. 50% resist isnt going to stop the flames making you vulnerable to a greatsword finishing move or a 1 hit arrow. Master difficulty is being considered, not adept.

Orcs get Battle Cry as well. It's just called Dismay and can use it more than once a day. Berserker has no equal. Orcs ,therefore, are the master race.

I agree with OP

Orcs get Battle Cry as well. It's just called Dismay and can use it more than once a day. Berserker has no equal. Orcs ,therefore, are the master race.


Inability to read +1

Orcs are forced to use a shout when unrelenting force, elemental fury, ice form or a high level shout are also needed to be used to win these very hard fights. Plus the stupid grunts are really enough to make orcs unplayable.



Furthermore in a 1v1 fight in real life I could win against anyone, mano a mano you might say. So I am right. Get Mad ?

the differences are minor
if you want to be an orc you can be just as good of a fighter as a nord, nord is just slightly better once a day

as for the high elves
they shouldn't be like warhammer because this is not warhammer
the whole idea is ridiculous

If everything is running, why do you need another shout after that? Just chase and kill them. And BC = Dismay.

And you couldn't beat me. I spilled Anderson silva's pint, and he bought ME another one!

MMA aint real fightin and grapplin is for faghs

just got a fresh cut and i be lookin for them freaks

Thats why I learned it with the Marines.

I agree with the Orc vs Nord arguement. Nords and Orcs are pretty equal until Nord whips out the Battle Cry. Then he wins the battle. Plus Nords look more attractive, though every race is well made.

Warrior: Nord>Orc>Redguard>Imperial

Mage: Altmer=Breton (Personally I prefer Bretons because of their better attitude and amazing magic resistance)

Stealth: Bosmer>Argonian=Khajiit

Dunmer are the Jack-Of-All-Trades type of character. They are good at everything, but not the best at any one thing (Which makes them my second favorite race after Nord and in front of Breton)

EDIT: P.S. Redguards are more akin to the North-African Moors, which are Arab. This is actually pretty obvious as they use scimitars, their names resemble Arab names, and by the clothing they wear. I don't think any race really mirrors our real-life African people. Unless those Africans are Arabs North of the Sahara (Eqyptians, Moroccans, Libyans).

Khajiit seem to mirror Central and South America natives. There is desert, rainforest, and illegal drugs comign out of both Elswehr and Cent./S. America